This morning I started listening to a podcast called Upstream, on which the host interviewed the author of a new book called The Great Dechurching, a Rev. Michael Graham. Graham spoke primarily from a statistical base, addressing trends of religious decline in America. For the first time in our nation’s history, a minority of Americans are members of religious communities in any capacity. With few exceptions, religious communities are in decline in our nation. They have been since the 1980s.
The churches I serve belonged to a denomination that was considered one of the “Seven Sisters of Mainline Protestant Denominationalism.” These denominations identified themselves with the ‘mainline’ area of city centers, which were populated by upper-middle class people with distinct sensibilities. They married themselves to a worldview called ‘Modernism,’ which imagined humanity to be perfectable and progressing towards a bright future in which our combined efforts would bring about the Kingdom of God on earth. Of course, this worldview hasn’t borne much fruit. Even so, those in leadership in the mainline denominations, including The United Methodist Church (from which we recently disaffiliated), refused to go back to a more traditional understanding of human nature and the role of the church in society. Rather than stand against the norms of a world bent on destruction, they any many other denominations have chosen instead to largely bless the prevailing culture. At that point, any Christian organization loses its purpose. The otherworldly nature of Christ and his church is such that, when any body becomes too worldly, it ceases to be distinctly Christian.
“Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.”
1 John 2:15-17
This is the decision before every denomination: Is it willing to offend and/or lose people for the sake of standing on truth and/or principle. For too many denominations, the answer has been ‘no.’ Rather, many a denomination is complicit in keeping their people ignorant of their doctrinal distinctives. People belong to their given tradition only because they were born into it, or raised in it, or married into it. Very few know their doctrinal heritage and are able to articulate it and connect it to scripture. We are at a very impoverished place!
As the churches I serve approach a new denomination, the Global Methodist Church, I will be urging all members to spend a significant amount of time and energy learning the doctrinal and historical reasons as to why such a group exists, such that they might be more engaged and joyful in their denominational relationship than they were under the UMC. The age of doctrinal ignorance is ending. Only those who take the time and make the mental and emotional space for learning will be able to withstand the cultural forces of anomie that are undoing Christendom in the West.
This is as it always has been and as it should be. The era of easy-beliefism is over. The era of believers who burn hot for their Lord continues. I’m eager to teach true and good doctrine to the sheep in this pasture. I hope they are eager to learn.
If you would like to check out the document I’ll be walking through, the Transitional Book of Doctrines & Discipline can be viewed and downloaded here: https://globalmethodist.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Transitional-Discipline.2022041257.pdf
If you would like to see the first segment of this series, dealing with the broad strokes of GMC doctrine, here is that video: